4.  The applicant was born in 1938 and lives in Landshut, Germany.
5.  In 1968 the applicant left the then communist Czechoslovakia. In 1970 she was found guilty of the offence of fleeing the Republic, and all her property was confiscated, including two plots of land (nos. 1141 and 1142) in the cadastral area of Kožichovice (“the land”).
6.  On 31 May 1976 the State transferred the right to the use of the land to the Třebíč municipality.
7.  In 1990 the majority of the land was transferred to the Třebíč cadastral area and the plots were renumbered. The land now comprises the following plots: no. 7283 and parts of nos. 7281, 7378, 2174/1, 2174/2 and 2174/3 in the cadastral area of Třebíč and nos. 1136/1, 1136/19 and a part of no. 1138/1 in the cadastral area of Kožichovice.
8.  On 27 March 1991 the Nový Jičín District Court quashed the applicant’s conviction and all ancillary decisions including the decisions on the confiscation of property with retrospective effect, pursuant to the Judicial Rehabilitation Act.
9.  According to the applicant, she had been registered as the sole owner of the land without interruption from 1960, and in support of that claim she provided extracts from the land register dated 17 September 1992 and 15 August 1995. According to the Government, both the applicant and the State were mistakenly registered as owners after 1971, when the applicant’s property was confiscated, whereas the State should have been registered as the sole owner.
10.  The municipality has been using the part of the land in the cadastral area of Třebíč, which has been partly built upon, for companies providing communal services.
11.  At the end of 1992 the applicant sent a letter to the municipality enclosing a document from the Land Registry confirming that she was the owner and the municipality as the user of the land in issue. On 10 February 1993 the municipality replied that it did not know why it was registered as the user of the land because it had not been using it. There seems to have been, however, some confusion as to which plots of land were concerned as the municipality’s letter explicitly referred to a plot with a different number, which did not in fact exist.
12.  On 7 November 1995 the municipality of Třebíč sent a letter to the applicant at an address in Slovakia, stating that she was registered as the owner of the land in the land register but that according to the 1976 transfer the land had been transferred to the municipality. The municipality therefore asked the applicant whether she could submit any documentation proving that ownership of the land had been transferred from her to the State. The letter was returned undelivered with a note that no such address existed.
13.  On 7 November 1995 the municipality of Třebíč sent a similar letter to the Třebíč District Office asking for information concerning the ownership of the land. On 4 December 1995 the District Office replied that it had no document proving a transfer of the land to the State.
14.  On 22 January 1996 a meeting took place between a representative of the municipality of Třebíč and the applicant’s husband. The record of the meeting stated that a meeting with the owner of the land, that is, the applicant, represented by her husband, had taken place and the representatives of the municipality had asked whether the applicant would be willing to sell the part of the land that was within the cadastral area of Třebíč. The applicant refused to sell it but said that she would be willing to exchange it for a plot of land of equivalent value.
15.  On 5 March 1996 the municipality of Třebíč informed the applicant that it had decided to rent that part of the land that was within the cadastral area of Třebíč. On 25 March 1996 a rental agreement was signed between the applicant and the municipality, which paid annual rent for it in 1996 and 1997.
16.  On 12 November 1997 the municipality requested to be entered in the land register as the sole owner of the part of the land that was within the cadastral area of Třebíč. The Registry granted that request.
17.  On 22 December 1997 the municipality informed the applicant that it had found a document proving that the State had acquired ownership of the land from her, namely criminal judgments given against the applicant in 1970 and 1971. The municipality had accordingly asked the Land Registry to register it as the owner of the part of the land that was within the cadastral area of Třebíč. As a result, it considered the rental agreement to have been rendered null and void and asked the applicant to return to it the rent paid for the years 1996 and 1997.
18.  Subsequently, the applicant, through her lawyer and her husband, began negotiations with the municipality to find a solution to the situation.
19.  In a letter of 10 August 1999 the municipality stated that it was the lawful owner of the part of the land that was within the cadastral area of Třebíč as the applicant had failed to claim it in restitution proceedings. It did not acknowledge any responsibility for its mistake in wrongly attributing ownership of the land to the applicant from 1992 to 1996.
20.  As there appeared to be no basis for a friendly settlement between the applicant and the municipality, the former requested the Land Registry to remedy the mistake and record her as the rightful and sole owner of the land in the register.
21.  On 23 July 2002 the Land Registry rejected her request as unfounded.
22.  On 28 September 1992 the Třebíč Building Office invited the applicant to attend proceedings regarding a request for a building permit in respect of a piece of land adjoining the part of the land that had remained within the cadastral area of Kožichovice.
23.  On 29 January 1993 the applicant sent a letter to the farming cooperative that was using the part of the land within the cadastral area of Kožichovice, requesting them to sign a rental agreement with her. There is no information in the case-file as to whether the farming cooperative replied.
24.  The village of Kožichovice requested the Land Registry to register it as the sole owner of the part of the land within the cadastral area of Kožichovice on 19 January 1995, 10 May 1996, and 14 August 1998, referring to Law no. 172/1991, by which municipalities were able to acquire ownership of certain State property. There is no information in the case-file as to which part of the land was registered as the property of the village at what time.
25.  On 24 October 2003 the applicant brought an action for the determination of the ownership of the land, claiming that she was the lawful owner, as the order for the confiscation of her property had never been executed and had now become time-barred, and she had been listed as the owner of the land both in the former land register (evidence nemovitostí) and the current one (katastr nemovitostí), and that she had been acknowledged as such by the authorities.
26.  On 20 October 2006 the Třebíč District Court found that the State had in practice seized the real property concerned in the 1970s and had subsequently exercised all the associated property rights even though both the State and the applicant had been registered as its owners in the land register. Therefore, the applicant should have claimed the plots of land under the relevant restitution legislation. Relying on the settled case-law of the Supreme Court, the court concluded that if a person could have asked for the return of a property under the restitution legislation he or she could not claim it under a general civil-law action, as the applicant was trying to do. Consequently, it dismissed the applicant’s action for lack of an urgent legal interest (naléhavý právní zájem) on the determination of ownership.
27.  The applicant appealed, stressing that at the time when the restitution legislation had been applicable there had been no one other than herself who could have been considered the owner of the plots of land. The State had treated her as the owner of the real property and thus she could not lawfully have had recourse to the restitution legislation.
28.  On 16 October 2007 the Brno Regional Court upheld the first-instance judgment, referring to opinion no. Pl. ÚS – st. 21/05 of the Constitutional Court, adopted on 1 November 2005 (see paragraph 34 below). It accepted, however, that the land-registering authorities had not kept their records properly, as both the applicant and the State had been listed as owners of the same land at the same time. If for that reason filing a restitution claim, which would have been an appropriate remedy under normal circumstances, had been outside the time-limits provided by the restitution legislation, the applicant could have considered claiming compensation for administrative malpractice on the part of the authorities. In any event, a civil action was not an appropriate way of raising restitution claims.
29.  On 5 March 2008 the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal on points of law by the applicant, endorsing the conclusions of the lower courts that, given that the authorities had seized the applicant’s real property by a final judgment as a result of her conviction, the applicant should have lodged a restitution claim either against the State, which was listed as the real property owner in the land register, or, failing that, with the relevant land authority, which would have made a decision as to ownership. The State had become the owner of the plots when the criminal judgment had become final, irrespective of the time when its ownership had been entered in the land register.
30.  The applicant lodged a constitutional appeal, complaining under Article 6 of the Convention and Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 that the courts had not taken into consideration her submissions regarding the non-execution of the order for the seizure of her property and the impossibility for her to have recourse to restitution legislation. In addition, she claimed that she was unable to seek the protection of her property rights owing to the practice of the Land Registry and the decisions of the courts.
31.  On 30 July 2008 the Constitutional Court dismissed the applicant’s constitutional appeal as manifestly ill-founded, referring to its opinion no. Pl. ÚS – st. 21/05 of 1 November 2005, which stated that the applicant in that case should not have used a general civil-law action but should have lodged her claim under the restitution laws. It further found that the courts had given reasoned and convincing judgments which had observed the relevant legislation and case-law. Finally, it acknowledged that the decisions could be seen as disproportionately harsh towards the applicant, who might have been misled by the incorrect record in the land register. If that was so and the applicant had suffered damage, she could consider claiming compensation from the State under the State Liability Act.